“Must have left that in my other pants.”
“Guess you’ll just have to wait till she finds you then.” He smiles and returns to contemplating the horizon.
Cowboy Bob moves us back to May of 2001 on our first jump. The second gets us to June of 1993. Blake and I help him switch to a spare set of batteries at that point. We’ve drifted pretty far south, but on our last jump of the day, Bob de-gravitizes an iron ring and secures it to the cable before lowering it to the ground as his anchor. When we jump, we find ourselves back in the field behind the barn, anchored to one of his tie-down points.
We’re back.
“Voila,” Bob declares. “1989.” He moves to the instrument cluster and double checks the indications. “It is now May 3rd, about two in the afternoon. We’re still a couple years ahead of when you left, but the last bit should be comfortable enough to do by chronometer.”
Bob signals Blake to pull on the cable to start our descent. In a few minutes we’re back on the ground. Blake and I vault over the edge of the basket to tie off the balloon, but Bob doesn’t get out of the gondola.
“No need to tie me off, this is where I leave you fine people.” He slaps the frame of the burner rig. “I think she’s still got one more good move in her before I have to stop and charge the batteries. I’m going to see if I can make the seventies tonight.”
“Will we see you again?” Francesca asks.
“Oh, I’m sure you will,” Bob replies, offering his hand to help her over the side. Francesca slides into the grass. “I do have something for you before I go.” He leans into one of the storage areas, hands a cardboard tube to Francesca, and then tosses something small and colorful at me. I catch it with both hands and open them to reveal a completed Rubik’s Cube.
“That will get you to the time you want to go. Keep the red side up. It’ll put you in Quickly’s lab in one of the jump rooms.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“We really appreciate everything,” Blake says. “You’ve been a life-saver.”
“It’s been a pleasure,” Bob replies. “Feel free to come back and see me anytime.”
“I hope you have a good time in 1910,” Francesca says. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Cowboy Bob nods and ignites the burner. We back away from the tether line and watch the balloon climb. As the tether cable grows taut, Bob leans over the edge of the basket and gives us a salute. We wave and he vanishes.
I stay looking at the sky for a few moments, just watching the vacant space he’s left behind. Francesca breaks the silence. “You know that scene in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy climbs out of the balloon to chase Toto, and the wizard can’t take her home because he floats away without her?”
“Yeah.”
“I think we’re Dorothy.”
“That’s okay.” I lower my gaze to the ranch around us. “We’re not going home yet. We still have our witch to melt.”
Chapter 20
“Time travel is a very effective way to sober up. It does however involve trying to make precise calculations while inebriated. I have visited some unexpected new places that way, but I can’t say I’d recommend it as common practice. ”
-Excerpt from the journal of Dr. Harold Quickly, 1975
“We need a plan,” Blake says.
We stride through the grass toward the barn. The mare in the corner of the paddock eyes us suspiciously as we make our way through the gate into the barnyard. We stop in the shade of the barn to consider our options.
“We know where Stenger is the night the lab burns,” I say. “And Carson and I got his gun, so after that point he should be unarmed.”
“You want to try to get to him then?” Blake asks.
“Seems like the best time to find him.”
“And then what do we do with him?” Francesca says.
“I don’t know. I think we probably need to kill him.”
Francesca frowns. “I’ve never plotted to kill someone before.”
“Me either, but I don’t know what else to do. I figure it’s like self defense, because we’re saving Carson.”
“Even if he’s unarmed?”
“He was unarmed last time and I let him go. That was obviously a mistake.”
“Yeah.” Francesca nods. “We owe it to Carson.”
“We’re going to need some kind of weapons then,” Blake says.
“And we’re going to need to use Bob’s gravitizer,” Francesca adds.
“We should have asked him if he had a gun we could borrow.” I shift my pack on my shoulder.
“We could try to buy one?” Blake suggests.
“We don’t have any ID,” Francesca says. “Or a car.”
The screen door on the house slams and I look around the side of the barn to see Connie on the porch, feeding scraps to a pair of cats. As she tosses them bits of food, more materialize out of the bushes until she’s feeding half a dozen. When we walk toward her, she looks up. “I hoped I might see you all again.” She tosses the last of the scraps to the cats and wipes her hands on her apron. She comes down from the porch to greet us.
“At least you didn’t say I told you so,” I say.
She smiles. “You young people seem to run off a lot, but I like it better when you come back. Is Bobby with you?”
“He actually just dropped us off.”
“He was going back farther to see some family, I think,” Francesca says.
“Oh. Okay. I’m glad he brought you three back. Did you have a good time?”
“Um. Well . . .” I mumble.
“It was educational,” Blake says.
Connie seems satisfied with that. “Why don’t you come inside, and I’ll fix you up a snack.”
“That’s nice of you,” I say.
The kitchen is full of baking supplies and fruit. The oven is on and something smells delicious. Francesca slides onto a stool at the counter. Connie checks the oven and I glimpse two pies inside before she shuts it again.
Pies are great, but we need a gun.
“We actually could use some help with something a little more serious today,” I say.
“Oh? What’s that dear?” Connie gives us her attention.
“We actually really need to borrow a gun.”
Connie’s smile fades. “A gun?”
“Yeah, we have something to do a couple of months ago that might involve some shooting.”
“Oh.” Connie fidgets with some spoons on the counter. “I know Levi has a rifle for the coyotes, but I don’t know if he’d be willing to loan it to you. What is it you are trying to shoot?”
“One of our close friends got murdered by a really bad man,” Francesca says. “We need to keep that from happening.”
Connie watches Francesca’s face with concern. “Well that is terrible . . . I don’t know if we have anything . . . I think Bob has his dad’s gun upstairs, but I don’t know how he would feel about it being used for something like that.” The conversation seems to have drained the joy out of her face. She moves an eggbeater to the sink and straightens her apron front.
This was a bad idea.
“It’s okay,” I say. “We can figure something out. We don’t mean to bother you with it.”
“Okay. I can talk to Levi,” she says.
“Your pies smell amazing.” Francesca sits up straighter on her stool.
“Oh, thank you.” Connie brightens a little. “I have an apple and a . . . a peach. I have a book club meeting later, and Bob’s kitchen is so much bigger than mine at home.”
We won’t be able to fit a rifle into the gravitizer upstairs. Levi’s gun won’t work. I wonder what Bob has?
“We were also hoping we could use Bob’s gravitizer, if it’s not too much trouble,” I say.
“Oh, yes. I think that would be all right,” Connie replies.
“Why don’t we take care of that real quick while you’re baking.” I nudge Blake with my elbow and gesture with my head toward the upstairs.
“Okay, I’ll see if I can find you all something to snack on.” Connie opens a pantry door and begins pulling things out.
“Okay, we’ll be back down shortly.” I lead the way upstairs to the office. It looks essentially the same as we left it in 2009. Cardboard tubes of maps still lean against the desk.
“Which map did Cowboy Bob give you?” Blake asks.
Francesca looks into the tube in her hand and pulls out the drawing inside. She lays it on the floor. The drawing looks like a spiderweb with the major lines labeled with letters. “It’s all the primes,” Francesca says. She points to the N branch. “There’s ours.”
A map to get us home. But not yet.
“We’re going to need to degravitize this.” I toss the Rubik’s Cube to Francesca, then begin rummaging through the cupboards and desk drawers.
“What are you looking for?” Blake asks.
“She said there’s a gun up here somewhere.”
“You’re going to get it, even though she said not to?” Francesca asks.
“Good idea.” Blake begins to help me search. “I’d rather face the anger of an elderly woman than go up against a serial killer unarmed.”
Francesca frowns but sets to degravitizing the Rubik’s Cube. I’m closing a drawer full of paperclips and staples when Blake finds it.
“Whoa. This should work.” He turns from the cabinet and displays a wooden box with two revolvers in it.
“Oh wow. Those are cool.” I admire the polished wood handles and shining stainless steel. “Are there bullets for them?”
“Yeah.” Blake reaches back into the cabinet, pulls out a small box labeled “Barnes,” and gives it a shake. It sounds full.
“Do you think they have gravitites in them?” Francesca asks.
“I guess we should check.” Blake lays the gun box and the box of ammo down on the floor in front of Francesca. She aims the end of her degravitizer at it and pushes the test button. The light turns green. “Nope.”
“I guess we’ll have to throw them in Bob’s machine,” I say. “Is there anything else we need to take with us?”
“What do we have to work with in that pack right now?” Blake asks. I grab our pack and dump it out on the floor. Our winter clothes tumble out, followed by my tortoise shell, a few other miscellaneous anchors we have left, and multiple envelopes of photos, along with our logbooks.
“Do we need to take all this stuff?” I ask.
“I’m way behind on logging our jumps.” Blake picks up his logbook.
“Mine is gone,” Francesca says.
“We should probably plan out this next one. I can add your entries into mine.” I pick up my logbook and flip to one of the empty pages. “Bob said the Rubik’s Cube is in one of the jump rooms the day the lab burns. That was January 9th, right? We need to figure out what time we want to show up.”
“What time did you get Stenger’s gun away from him?” Francesca asks. “I don’t want to show up till then.”
I think about my trip into the lab with Carson. “I remember we were stuffing things into the packs around six o’clock. We ran into Stenger right after that. I’m guessing it wasn’t much later, 6:05 maybe?”
“When did the lab start burning?” Blake asks.
“I saw the smoke before I jumped back, I think that was probably around six-thirty, maybe a little after. I don’t remember exactly.”
“Did you write it in your logbook?” Francesca points to the book in my hand.
I flip through the pages. “No. I think I forgot.”
Blake stares at his logbook. “I’m starting to understand why these things are important.”
“Okay, so we’re trying to get to Stenger between the time he loses his gun at 6:05 and when he lights the place on fire a half hour later? Is this really our best option?” Francesca asks. “It sounds unnecessarily dangerous.”
“We could try to find him later, but I don’t know where he’ll be, and he could end up with another gun for all we know,” I say. “This is the only time we know of, where we know where he is, and we know he doesn’t have a gun.”
“I want one of our guns at least,” Francesca says.
“You know how to use it?” Blake hands her one of the revolvers.
“I think I’ve seen enough Clint Eastwood movies to figure it out,” Francesca replies. “Plus my brother took me to a gun range once. I’ve killed my share of paper targets.”
“So we get to the lab jump room, find our way near the hallway where Stenger is when he loses his gun, shoot him and get out of there, yeah?” My stomach churns at the idea of being in the hallway with that psycho again. It has to be done. Carson needs us.
I toss our other anchors back into the pack and leave out the socks and my extra shirt. I pick up my tortoise shell and extract the photo from inside it. When all hope is lost. I put the photo back inside and toss the shell into the pack. “You want your coat?” I ask Francesca.
“Yes. It’s January there.”
I hand it to her. I cinch up the pack and start dialing my chronometer for January of 1986. “What’s the Zulu conversion for winter? Five hours?”
“Yeah. No daylight savings.” Blake starts dialing his as well.
“Wait, we’re going right now?” Francesca asks. “What about Connie? She’s downstairs making food for us.”
“I think the snacks can wait.”
“That’s kind of rude,” Francesca says.
“We’re going to the past,” I say. “She won’t notice. We can always stop for cookies or whatever on the way back. I really want to get this over with before I have to think about it any longer.”
Francesca frowns again. Blake is stoic. “Fine,” she says. “But I need to pee first.” She sets the revolver on the desk and disappears into the hall.
“That’s probably a good idea,” I say.
“So what did we decide on? Six?” Blake asks, as he plugs our chargers into the wall.
“I think we should get there a little earlier to give ourselves time. We’ll just have to be careful to not run into me or Carson before they get the gun away from Stenger. The lab is a big place. We should be able to hide out and get ourselves some prep time. Let’s go with 5:25. That should be plenty of time.”
Blake nods and finishes his chronometer settings. I do the same. Blake stuffs the box of ammo and the revolver in the gravitizer, then grabs Francesca’s gun and puts that in as well. I move to the control panel.
The blue vial on the side is still full of gravitites. There is a button labeled “gravitize” and one labeled “degravitize”. The gravitize button is already illuminated. Simple enough. I flip the lever, and it’s only a matter of seconds till the chime dings. Blake opens the door and pulls out the guns. He hands one to Francesca as she walks back in. I put the box of ammo in a side pocket of my pack.
“Where’s the bathroom up here?”
Francesca points. “First one on the left.”
As the water from the sink flows over my fingers, I look my reflection in the eyes. They look the same as they always do. Maybe a little more tired. You’re going to have to kill somebody. Are those the eyes of a killer? I shake off the thought. You’re going to save someone. Killing Stenger is just the only way to make sure he won’t hurt anybody else. The families of all those people he’s hurt over the years would probably thank me. The face in the mirror doesn’t look convinced.
My heart has begun to pound as I rejoin my friends in the office. Francesca and Blake both have the unloaded guns tucked into the fronts of their pants. I join them in the middle of the room and pick up the Rubik’s Cube, holding it a little lower than the height of the lab anchor stands. Blake hands me the end of my charger cord. Francesca hesitates a moment, then turns and darts out to the railing of the stairs in the hallway. She leans over and yells down, “Miss Connie? We’ll be right back!” She doesn’t wait for a response, but promptly rejoins us and puts her hands to ours.
“Feel better?” I say. She g
ives me a nod. I count off. “One, two, three.”
The fluorescent lights of the lab jump room seem harsh and uninviting after the warm afternoon sun of Montana. Jump lessons feel like forever ago. We move away from the anchor stand and I stuff the Rubik’s Cube into my pack.
Francesca pulls her revolver from her waistband. “Bullets, please.” I slide the ammo box out of the side pocket of the pack as Blake unhinges his revolver. I open the box and hold out six bullets. “How did you get it open?” Francesca asks.
Blake hands his revolver to her and takes hers. I hand the bullets to her instead.
“It’s this thing on the side.” Blake shows it to Francesca.
“I thought you said you didn’t know much about guns,” she replies.
“I can get them open. That’s about my limit.”
I fish out six bullets for Blake.
“Um. Why aren’t these fitting?” Francesca asks.
I watch her trying to slide the bullets into the various holes in the gun. “Let me see.” She hands me the gun.
“She’s right,” Blake says. “They don’t fit.”
I try to slide one of the bullets into Francesca’s gun and the brass casing is just slightly too large for the holes. “Shit.” I look at the flap on the box. “Are these the wrong kind of bullets?”
Blake takes the box from my hands. “It says 0.45 caliber. What are these guns?”
“I don’t know.” I turn Francesca’s gun over in my hands and read the engraving on the barrel. “Shit. It says 0.38.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Francesca says. “Seriously? They won’t work?”
“Oh God. I’m so sorry,” Blake says. “I just grabbed what was next to the gun box.”
“Does that one say the same thing?” I point to Blakes gun.
He nods. “Thirty-eight.”
“Why would Bob have the wrong bullets in there?” Francesca asks.
“He must own a forty-five somewhere too,” Blake mumbles. “I never bothered to look for more guns. I thought those were the only ones.”
“Oh God. We’re in a building with a serial killer and we have no weapons at all now? We’ve got to get out of here,” Francesca says. She moves to the blue door and swings it open.
In Times Like These: eBook Boxed Set: Books 1-3 Page 35
